MISTERI (Τὰ μυστήρια). — From the Greek μύειν = to close (the eyes or mouth), hence μυεῖν = to initiate (into secret cults) and μύστης = initiated. M. is the name, always written in the plural, for particular festivals during which initiation (τελετή, μύσεις, initia) into cults not communicable (ἄρρητα) to the uninitiated took place. The m. possess a distinctive character corresponding to two stages in religious development: the initial stage, proper to agrarian rites intended to renew the forces of nature, exhausted after the labor of germination, through rites of a sacred-magical character accompanied by dances, the use of masks, shouts, and sexually licentious acts; and the stage reached by some of them when they sublimated their meaning in harmony with the cultural and sacral development of the group, transferring it from the awakening of nature to that of the soul through a natural association of ideas that finds a spontaneous analogy between nature, renewed every spring, and the fate of the human soul. It is understood that this rebirth or resurrection of the god who is patron of the mystery is not to be taken in the precise sense in which one speaks of the Resurrection of the Lord and of that of Lazarus after four days, but in the analogous sense in which Origen, and after him s. Girolamo, explain, with reference to the same pagans, the death and resurrection of Adonis as
the depositing of seeds in the earth and their putting forth new greenery in the spring.
Such concern for the fate of the soul, to which the religion of the State gives no thought, being concerned solely with the religious and social discipline of public worship, awakens as civilization and culture advance, fostering the development of individualism in the spheres of thought and conscience; it finds appropriate fulfillment in those religious conventicles that arose in primitive environments, remained unchanged in their ritual, but were detached from their initial magical-agrarian meaning and brought, in language and spiritual outlook, to the level of the civilization of their time.
All the m. require a preparation that must place the individual in a state of ritual purity, through: a) exorcisms, ablutions, and various purifications with water, fire, sulfur, and ventilation (negative purification, ἔγνεσι); b) sexual abstinence, since pollution is a miasma that stains and weakens the individual, whereas abstinence strengthens him; penances, mortifications, fasts, and abstinence from food (positive purification, καθαριές), insofar as food can, by weighing down the body, deprive the spirit of its strength and prevent it from experiencing those visions (hallucinations) that make it capable of receiving revelation; and finally c), dances, formulas, and sacred invocations that place the individual, now purified, in a condition to receive the manifestation of the god and to enlist in his militia.
Initiation proper takes place through a rite (τὰ δρώμενα, action), preceded or accompanied by the requisite instruction (τὰ λεγόμενα), which effects the mystic union of the initiate with the god of the mystery. This union may, according to the nature of the rite, be understood as a relationship of filial descent (Eleusi, Sabazio), conjugal union (Attis), or friendship (Mithra). And since the m. are originally agrarian rites, or at least, like Mithraism, contain agrarian elements, the ritual as a whole refers to the cycle of the seasons, which is a cycle of death and rebirth, with the immediate effect of strengthening the individual’s earthly life and nourishing in him the hope of a blessed destiny in the afterlife.
The initiatory rite comprises the revelation and performance of a sacred rite that remains a secret to the uninitiated and proceeds through stages that are not the same for all the m., but that all express the concept of the individual’s renewal. There is the touching of sacred objects; the recitation of formulas attesting to the cultic acts performed; the sight or contemplation of objects capable of placing the observer in ecstasy and giving him the assurance of future blessedness; enthusiasm (indiamento) attained through dance, which produces a fascinating power, to the sound of deafening noises—a dance capable, like no other, of exciting all the individual’s powers, estranging him from the sensory world (ἔκστασις) and giving him the sense of being possessed by the god (κατεχόμενος), to the point that he applies the very name of the divinity to himself (Saboi! Bakhoi! Attis!). Another means of expressing union with the divinity is the sacred meal which, while effecting the union of the individual with the god, makes him feel, when taken communally, the social bond that fraternally unites the adherents. Originally intended to incorporate, through ingestion of the sacrificed animal, the sacred forces contained within it (m. of Dionysus), it later came to signify a renewal of life (m. of Attis), and finally assumed the meaning of a banquet intended to seal the union of the adherents with one another and with the divinity who is patron of the association (m. of Mithra).
ESCHATOLOGY. - The fundamental objective of the m. is salvation (σωτήρια, salus) through assimilation to the god who is the patron of the m. This salvation is not merely liberation from physical ills, from which the gods of Olympus were also able to deliver people and consequently bore the epithets of benefactors (εὐερετεῖς) and saviours (σωτήρες), as well as the gift of good health; rather, it is spiritual salvation, that is, the certainty of attaining blessed immortality in the likeness of the god. It is understood that, even when the m. has attained a high spiritual level, this salvation will be understood more or less nobly, according to the moral capacity of the initiate. The crude man will take pleasure in the coarse orgiastic rites that excite his senses and place him in a state of vulgar intoxication; the superstitious man will attribute to the mystery ritual a sacromagical power that guarantees his salvation; the philosopher will see in the myths and rites of the m. the symbols of truths dear to his speculative spirit; the mystic will seek, through the rite, to attain union with the divinity.
M. AND CHRISTIANITY. - Christianity exhibits certain characteristics that bring it close to the m.; indeed, it too has a program of universal salvation, it too has an initiation rite (Baptism) that incorporates the initiate into the community and a rite of communion (Eucharist) that unites the initiates with one another and with their head and Savior Jesus; it too attaches salvific value to the sacrifice performed on the Cross by the divine founder; it too employs the terminology in use among the mystery religions: “m. of the kingdom of God” (Mc. 4, 11); “m. of the Gospel” (Eph. 6, 19); “m. of Christ” (Col. 4, 3); “perfect (τέλειος) man in Christ” (Col. 1, 28).
But in the face of these analogies, Christianity displays peculiarities that make it an original religion. 1) First of all, its founder is not a mythical being, like Dionysus, Osiris, Attis, Mithra, but a person of divine and human nature, who lived in the full light of history and was put to death by order of a Roman procurator, whose name the Christian confession of faith takes care to mention as a guarantee of historicity. - 2) His sacrifice is not linked to the seasonal cycle, but is understood as an act of supernatural justice owed to God in expiation of the sins of humanity: a profound ethical significance capable of directing the adherents of the new religion along a path of high moral perfection. - 3) Christianity sinks its roots not in the soil of paganism, but in the tenacious soil of the Jewish religion, surpassing its sacrificial ritualism and giving prominence to its strictly religious aspect concerning love of the Heavenly Father and the establishment of a kingdom of goodness accessible to all. - 4) The m. have a pantheistic vision of divinity, in keeping with the tendency of all paganism, which identifies God with nature; Christianity, on the other hand, with its conception of a transcendent and creative God, experiences union with him as an act of love arising from the free will of man. - 5) In the m., and in religious philosophy generally during the imperial period, salvation is, essentially, a conquest of the intellect; in Christianity, salvation is a free gift of God, a guarantee merited for man by the saving death of Christ. - 6) The attainment of salvation and the consequent happiness is in the m. an exclusively individual matter; in Christianity, on the other hand, all the adherents feel themselves united as brothers in the hope of the Kingdom of God announced beforehand by the founder. It is a vision of collective happiness, rendered with incomparable efficacy in the Didoché by the Eucharistic food scattered like a grain of wheat over the hills and gathered together and made one in the form of bread.
For a description of the individual m.: V. ADONE; CIBELE; DIONISO; ELEUSINI, M.; ISIDE; MITHRA E MITHRAISMO; SAMOTRACIA, M. di. For the m. as medieval sacred representations, V. TEATRO.